5/26/05: Covalent Bonds and Shit

It started with a chemistry test and ended with me pretending to graduate from high school.

I'll spare you some of the details along the way because I intend to tell the story in the next hour and four minutes.

What happened, what launched it all, is that I tanked a chemistry test during my sophomore year in high school. I knew I tanked it, but I didn't know just how badly. And I was scared to find out. Our teacher, Dr. Lefkowitz, was a genuine asshole and it wouldn't be beneath him to call out our grades as we got our tests back. So on the day when we were scheduled to get them back, I skipped class. It was a simple decision, made in probably two to three minutes' time, but it shaped the rest of my adolescence and continues to impact my life to this very day.

Back to the test. I went to Stuyvesant High School on East 15th Street, and if you've heard of it you may know that it has a reputation as an extremely competitive school. Future Nobel Prize winners and future high-powered lawyers and kids who got 1580's on their SAT's and cried when they didn't get 100 on a math test. Yes, we had some weenies. The good thing was, if you were a second-tier student like myself, you could sort of float above the lunacy of the competition, because you simply weren't good enough to participate anyway. So I got decent grades my first year and a half, not working too hard, not getting caught up in any bullshit. Just minding my awkward teenage business and trying to find my way in the world.

Then during the second semester of my sophomore year, something went wrong inside of me. From people I've talked to over the years, I realize that this is a dangerous time in a person's development; a lot of kids go off the rails right around that age. Some might argue that it's the discovery of girls and the ensuing hormonal chaos that causes the breakdown, but speaking personally I had been achingly aware of the magic of girls much earlier, maybe in 3rd grade. Then again in 7th. And pretty much solidly from that point forward.

If I had to trace it to something beyond teen angst, beyond the general feelings of longing and alienation and inadequacy that we all feel from time to time, I would say it might have been my head over heels love affair with basketball, a sport I had never even tried until 9th grade. It consumed me, and when I was skipping class, you could usually find me on the courts of Stuyvesant Town, playing ball with grown men who had once been lost kids like me. Fuckups who never overcame their bad 2 minute decisions from 20 years earlier. 

Whatever it was, something invaded my soul around that time, and it caused me to stop doing my schoolwork. I don't know if the intensity of the work increased and I was too dumb or too lazy to keep up, or if I just melted down all on my own. What I do know is that I can directly trace it to the moment sophomore year when I decided, You know what? I'm not going to Dr. Lefkowitz's class next period to get my 63 back. I just can't do it. Maybe tomorrow I can do it.

It's weak thinking, but it's easy to think weak, especially when the alternative was going to class and seeing all my friends with their shimmering 97's and even their respectable 85's. I hadn't studied, I hadn't learned the material, and I had failed the test. I knew it.  So I bailed. And, you guessed it, I bailed the next day as well. And I never went back to his class. Soon I stopped going to a couple other classes as well, and the situation started to spin out of control. There was the uncomfortable daily routine in which my friends would go to class, see that I wasn't there, and then we'd all meet up and play ball after school and pretend everything was fine.

I ended up failing three classes that semester and two more the first semester of my junior year.  I hid everything from my parents and entered into a "don't ask-don't tell" gentleman's agreement with my friends. They knew I was losing my mind, and I appreciated the fact that they never mentioned it. The weird thing is that I would go to school every day, go to homeroom, be marked "present," and then simply skip the classes I didn't like. It was not a well-devised plan. I don't recommend it.

I can remember one day when things hit rock bottom. I was circulating way too many lies and it was wearing me out. I left school around 10 am and wandered for a few blocks, walking in the general direction of my apartment. I didn't know where to go. I was like Kevin Costner at the end of "No Way Out." I finally decided that I wanted to go home, lay in bed and hide from it all. I wanted to take a full sick day and have my father take care of me. So I decided I would do just that. Only I was so clearly not sick that I figured I'd have to sneak into the house when he wasn't around so I could better pull it off. During that period, my father was not working and my sister was going to City-As-School, an experimental high school where kids who couldn't really deal with their traditional high schools could go for a different kind of learning experience. Instead of classes, you had a job. And you got graded on it. My sister was managing a theater or something, and on this morning, she didn't have to be anywhere. When I arrived at the front door to my apartment, I looked through our bent-up keyhole latch and at the end of our long hallway I could see my sister and my father, sitting at the living room table together, reading the paper and drinking coffee.

I was jealous of their legitimate peaceful morning. I resented them for having no place to be. I also knew that I didn't have the emotional strength to muster a good fake illness in front of the two of them. It would be easier if I could get into the bed without talking to them, I thought. So I waited for them to go out. I sat in the stairwell one floor above my apartment for about two hours, holding my head in my hands, trembling with anxiety, waiting for that door to open. Finally, in the early afternoon, they went out for a walk.  And I snuck into the house and collapsed into my bed.  And I pulled off fake sick for a day. But the problems were still surrounding me, and I didn't have the wherewithal to solve them on my own.

Finally, a teacher called my house one evening and told my father that I hadn't been to his class for about two months. My pops gently confronted me. I told him as much truth as I could remember. And I stopped skipping class. Unfortunately, it was too late for those five classes I had flunked. I would have to make them up as part of my schedule during my last year and a half of high school.  So during that last semester senior year, when everybody has only four classes scheduled and leaves school at noon, I'd have 7 and leave school at 3.

If you've ever failed a class, you know it can be pretty humiliating. I was so embarrassed about the fact that I was re-taking sophomore classes as a junior and junior classes as a senior that I never admitted to my friends that I had failed anything. I just went in and did the work and slowly dug myself out of my hole. I made friends with some kids in the class beneath me but I never acknowledged them in front of my own friends, for fear of being found out. The lies were continuing, but at least I was going to class.

One day after class I had volunteered to return a Bunsen burner to the chemistry department.  There I ran into Deion, who was swinging by looking for a college recommendation. Once he saw me standing there with the burner, I knew my goose was cooked. Chemistry is a sophomore class and I was a junior, holding a god damn Bunsen burner.

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

"I'm getting a recommendation," he said. "What about you...?"

"Lefko failed me," I finally admitted. I can still hear those exact words ringing out. We were standing in the hall right outside the chemistry department and I felt an enormous unburdening just to have told someone. Deion was nice about it. He couldn't have been surprised. Whatever the case, it felt wonderful to see that he was still my friend even though I had become a fuckup. But I still swore him to secrecy.

Semesters went by. I kept chipping away at the failed classes that I had to make up. My grades improved to barely adequate levels. By my last semester I was all set to graduate on time with my friends. I had, to my astonishment, been accepted to college. I even had a girlfriend. Then one day, with about six weeks left in my final semester, I was examining my transcript and I realized that I had failed a required class and never made it up. And now it was too late; I was fucked. But I didn't say anything. I just rode it out for awhile. I attended the graduation ceremony at Lincoln Center. My name was even called to come up and get my fake diploma. But as any burnout worth his salt knows, the ceremony means nothing. You get your real diploma a week or so later, after they make sure you passed all your classes and stuff.

About two days before the last day of high school, they passed out letters to all the kids who were not going to be allowed to graduate. There were two potential reasons for not graduating. The first and more common was that you had failed to return a textbook.  In this case, you merely had to stop by the administrative office, return the textbook or pay for it, and then you would receive your diploma right on the spot. The second and more ominous reason for getting the letter was that you had failed a class or ten and your ass was going to have to attend summer school or repeat 12th grade in order to graduate. This was the category I fell into, and I knew it. My only ace in the hole was that I also had one unreturned textbook -- a chemistry book, ironically -- and I figured maybe I could bluff the office lady into thinking that was what was holding up my diplomage. It didn't say on the letter exactly what the problem was, so I figured It was worth a shot.

I got on line at the "clear your name or sign up for summer school" window, and as shitty luck would have it, my good friend Benjy was standing right in front of me. He had a couple of textbooks to return, and as soon as he did, they handed him that spankin' diploma. He offered to wait while I returned my book, and then we could go outside together and start signing people's yearbooks and imagining the good times ahead.

"Nah, you go ahead," I told him, petrified that he might be there when they told me I needed to go to summer school. "This might take a few minutes."

Like a good friend, he left without asking any questions. Now my turn was up.

"Returning a textbook," I lied to the office lady.

The lady took the textbook, looked up my name in their files, and was about to go grab my diploma when something in my file struck her as amiss. She made a very serious face and to this day I am certain she noticed that I had a failed class to make up. She grabbed an assistant principal who was standing nearby. They huddled for a good minute or two, her giving him the rundown, and I could feel my summer start to slip away. 

Then, with one casual wave of the hand, that kind assistant principal basically said, "Screw it, give the kid his diploma."  I don't know if he felt sorry for me or if he was confused by my textbook ploy or if he just didn't want to deal, but 18 years later I don't care. To him I simply say: Thank you.

So there you have it: I'm a high school dropout and a college graduate.  Keep it under your hat.

Thanks for sitting through that crap. Now tell me, whodat? 10 points, you can answer immediately.